
Qass. 
Book. 



,2 H 



S^^ f 



<3> 






SLAYERTS LAST WORD. 



DISCOURSE 



PREACHED IN THE SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 



MIDDLETOWN, CT., 



ON THE SABBATH MORNING AFTER THE 



^ssassiitatiou of freBihitt iTiurulu. 



BY 




JOHN L. DUDLEY, 



PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. 



MIDDLETO'WN': 

D. BARNES, 

1865. 



MiDDLETOwisr, April 20tli, 1865, 
Rey. J, L, Dudley, 

Dear Sir — "We were so very much delighted with the patriotic and truly 
Christian sermon you preached on Sunday morning last, that we are 
very desirous that others should share the pleasure it afforded us, 
and at the same time profit by the sound doctrine you so ably sup- 
ported on that occasion. This induces us to ask a copy of the discourse 
for the press. By acceding to our request, you will very much oblige. 

Yours Respectfully, 

BENJAMIN DOUGLAS, 
A. B. CALEF, 
J. N. CAMP, 
M. B. COPELAND, 
C. R. OILMAN, 
G. H. HULBERT, 
W. W. WILCOX, 
JNO. M. DOUGLAS, 
H. S. WHITE. 



MiDDLETOWN, April 24th, 1865. 

Gentlemen — The discourse of which you ask a copy, was purely 
extemporaneous, spoken at the solemn call of the hour. 

If I can reproduce it in manuscript form, it shall be submitted to your 
discretion at my earliest convenience. 

Very truly yours, 

J. L. DUDLEY. 

To Hon. B. Douglas, Dr. C. R. Gilman, H. S. White, Esq., and 
others. 



DISCOURSE. 



Isaiah, 24: 11. 

ALL JOY IS darkened; THE MIRTH OF THE LAND IS GONE. 

This is the refrain of every heart in this tearful pres- 
ence this morning — the speechless lament on the quiver- 
ing lip of the whole community — the muffled echo of 
the deep, heavy pulse of woe that throbs at the heart of 
the nation. 

A terrible thing has come upon the land! — an awful 
darkness suddenly shrouded it. The people stand chilled 
in horror! — pierced, to the life, by an unutterable grief 
Mourning is everywhere — in the streets — in the air. T 
hear it in the bell-toll, — see it on the mute lip of these 
sable drapings of woe. The light of the blessed morn- 
ing seems charged with its burden. Not only is it in 
the Capitol, so hushed and awe-stricken ; but by every 
fireside in the land — in every solitary heart. There is 
no tongue to speak aught else — there is no ear for any 
other word. 

Our venerated President is no more ! Abraham Lin- 
coln, the wise, the pure, the noble, the true, is dead ! 



6 

Still in his shroud this morning, lies the Chief Magistrate 
at Washington. He fell by the hand of an assassin on 
Friday night, in an hour of respite from crushing care, 
unsuspecting and defenceless. A dastardly fiend in 
human shape slew him. The mildest of men, the most 
lenient of living rulers, was murdered, deliberately shot, 
while in company with his family, by an infamous out- 
law, instigated by devils. The loved and trusted leader 
in our troubles, — the terror of rebels, the discomfiture of 
treason, — fell a victim to the foul plot that has been seek- 
ing to murder the nation for the bloody years just past. 
This thing is a crime whose baseness language lacks 
terms to name. The fiendish purposes that inspired it 
are more execrable than any that have invoked the scorn 
of mankind in bur past history. There is an audacity of 
infamy in it, all things considered, that seeks, among the 
nations of the earth, a parallel in vain. Tyrants have 
sometimes quickly gone down, because they were tyrants. 
Grinding vassalage and studied cruelties have become 
their own executioners, in recoiling vengeance quickly 
meted out. But here comes the skulking assassin with 
his cowardly poniard to strike at the heart of charity 
itself, — with deadly malice he comes, aiming at a life 
whose forgiving magnanimity towards blood-thirsty foes, 
became the marvel of the age, — with fallen hate and infer- 
nal inspiration that relieve the blackness of hell itself 
This is the last lurid flame from the burnings of defeated 
treason, the mean stab in the dark of humiliated inso- 
lence, the final desperate deed of an expiring barbarism. 



And as if this were not enough to damn to eternal infamy 
the schemes of treason, of which the assassin's deed is 
the black culmination, the dastardly creature must needs 
adorn his chivalric tale by invading the sanctities and tear- 
ful assiduities of private life, skulking under the cover of 
night-time, into the sick chamber of a wounded and 
apparently dying man, that he may stab his body there 
upon his bed. 

bright, consfimmate flower of heroic stem ! — the toil 
of centuries from boastful stock, the last and divinest of 
heaven's planting, — we take thy blossom, nay, we take thy 
fruit, and in the alembic of God untwine the dark fibre 
of thy crimson pedigree, and find the root and seed 
thereof in the putrid hell of Slavery ! Here are the 
dregs of the elect institution, its final product. Throw- 
ing aside" all disguises, it presents the manhood it has 
been able to produce after a toil of two hundred and 
fifty years^ a finished specimen of the civilization it has 
commissioned treason to establish upon the ruins of your 
wise and beneficent government. 

It would be a strange forgetfulness of the proprieties 
and decencies of our most holy religion, if we should fail 
to bring this great sorrow to its altars and its sanctuaries, 
and here bow in solemn recognition of that God who 
thus speaks to us in his providence. God gives us our 
texts from that scroll which he is unrolling in the lives of 
individuals and the history of nations, as truly as from 
the inspired lips of Apostle and Seer. An offence to 
heaven should we be this morning, were we to shut out 



8 

from our hearts and our public services the solemn lesson 
which comes to us in this fearful calamity. The people 
that can do this, and then seek to hide their dereliction 
behind the sacredness of the day and the place, betray 
and dishonor the very God and religion whose name they 
assume to bear. The nation, which rules God out of its 
life, and shuts the door in his face as he comes bringing 
sermons, and admonitions and solemn lessons to its faith, 
digs its own grave. Let us bring this mourning to our 
public altars and into our closets ; let us take it into the 
holy of holies and ask God what it means. We invoke 
the sprinklings of mercy upon these tears, that there 
come forth healing from their bitter ministry. We 
put our lament into psalm, and hymn, and prayer, and 
reverent speech before God, — till the judicial darkness be 
lifted away. 

It is not my purpose to dwell upon this diabolical 
crime at length this morning. The character of it is 
infamous, obviously. At this moment, as the news just 
bursts upon us, it is too early, in advance of the facts, to 
set forth its full character, in all the dark complications 
and extensive bearings it involves. Waiving, therefore, 
this, which will claim another hour, we may yield to such 
reflections as at once suggest themselves. 

1. And first, we note the contrast between the emo- 
tions that were so mighty on the last Sabbath, and the 
tides of feeling in the soul still more mighty to-day. 
Then one rushing wave of joy swept over the nation ; . 



9 

now the wave comes rolling back, changed into black- 
ness and death, and we are drowned in woe. One short 
week only has intervened. In common with all the 
sanctuaries of the land, which acknowledge God in prov- 
idence, we struck our notes of jubilee and thanksgiving 
unto the Ruler and Disposer of events, that the defiant 
Rebel Capital, the centre and symbol of the whole con- 
spiracy, had fallen ! Even then, in the sacred hour of 
our joy, tlie main army of the insurgents had capitulated^ 
and we had to wait only till the morning dispatches for 
the news. The death knell of the rebellion was then 
sounded. Then joy shot through the heart of the peo- 
ple like electric fire. It leaped in every pulse, it spar- 
kled in every suffused eye. Bells rang it out, flags flung 
it to the winds, old men wept it, and children rushed 
from the school-house delirious with the sacred ecstacy, 
into the streets. The long woe was ending. Congratu- 
lations re-clasped the brotherhood of patriotism, and told 
how deep and dear was the love of country. We 
thought the war was over, and breathed long and free 
again, under the certain prospect of peace. 

But in an evil hour, in the twinkling of an eye, the 
quick contractile heart of the nation leaped in one con- 
vulsive rebound of agony, and stood still, transfixed 
with horror ! The light elastic pulse of joy sunk down 
to the deep, heavy throb of death. The land was dumb, 
the people staggered to and fro in b6wilderment, the 
stoutest were stunned and speechless, from a shocking 
and overwhelming crime, unparalleled in the deeds of 



10 

darkness. Men were appalled and stood aghast at the 
murder of the Chief Magistrate of the nation, for they 
knew not what might be next. Calamity quickly gave 
place to the most direful apprehensions. It was the 
grave of the nation, on that terrible night, that seemed 
to open by the dead form of its Chief There is a pes- 
tilence that walketh in darkness, and destruction that 
wasteth at noon-day. And yet these are pale and inef- 
fectual shades, compared with the dread and infamy that 
deepen the dye of this murderer's deed. In life, we are 
ever reminded, we are in the midst of death. The bright- 
est hour that is on us, may be already, laving its feet in 
the shadow of the grave. 

2. But the greatness of our loss presses quickly upon 
the thought. Aside from the fact that the assassin's vic- 
tim is the President himself, the of&cial embodiment and 
central function of the government ; in addition to the 
most evident truth that he was a providential man, raised 
up by God for the special work he so signally performed, 
the national calamity derives additional magnitude from 
the consideration that we are just at a critical turning 
point in the fortunes of our life-and-death struggle with 
treason — a point where the firmest hand and the steadi- 
est brain are required. Just in the height and power of 
the storm, while rocking and plunging among the bil- 
lows of its fury, the military power of the rebellion is 
seen to break and give way, and a new point in our 
course is to be taken among the shallows and rocks of 



11 

political issues. Exactly here is demanded the pilotage 
of consummate statesmanship. The strategy of treason 
in diplomacy is more perilous than the strategy of trea- 
son in arms. In the first the Devil is at home — in the 
last not always. Just at this crisis, with his grasp firmly 
upon the vitals of the monster treason, all eyes were 
eagerly turned to the glorious leader, whom the people 
had learned implicitly to trust, and whom they had just 
re-consecrated to a second term, for the finishing up of 
the work so successfully prosecuted. He was to estab- 
lish the nation, reclaimed, regenerated, .upon the endur- 
ing foundations of order, righteousness and peace. 

But alas ! just as the tide was turning, the strong arm, 
the cool head, the great true heart, are stricken down. 
This morning the country stands aghast, poised and per- 
illed on the giddy edge of destruction! Frightful anar- 
chy stares it in the face ! Indefinite shapes of horror 
haunt the apprehensions of every soul. By the turn of 
an hour, all government may cease in ihe simultaneous 
destruction of its co-ordinate functions, leaving the demon 
revolution to seize and bear on the bloody wreck at his 
will. The blade of the assassin flashes out from the dark- 
ness everywhere. This is the horror that freezes all life 
upon the instant. And yet let us not forget that there 
is a God that rules, and that his wisdom is mightier than 
all the subtlety of murderous fiends. Even here it is 
not for us to say, that the springs of a new life have not 
been already touched, and of a new dominion, that shall 
not only sink beneath the wreck of his own infernal 



12 

schemes, the malign foe in destruction utter, but bear the 
nation on to a deliverance most signal, and plant it in 
peerless renown, beyond the shock of treason or the 
machinations of alien hate. If God so wills it, this very 
peril may be the occasion upon which the hidden safety 
shall be disclosed, — the last fiery gateway through which 
our hopes pass, into security and strength eternal. 

3, But count it no strange thing that this deed 
of darkness should have been committed at this time. 
Why not? What is there unnatural about it? I mean 
out of the ordinary connections of cause and effect? An 
inspiration that is infernal enough to organize a conspir- 
acy to overthrow this government, for the purpose of 
establishing on its ruins the odious and sodomizing em- 
pire of Slavery, is bad enough, and mean enough, to be 
a cowardly assassin. A purpose that is born of perjury, 
baptized in treason, and confirmed in blood and murder 
as its sacrament^ grace, is eligible to any master stroke 
in the dastard's vocation ; and could skulk behind your 
noble President and shoot him without a warning, as 
naturally as it can whip its helpless women and sell its 
own children. A set of men, an institution, a cause, base 
enough to fire on an unarmed vessel bearing supplies to 
a starving garrison of its own government ; base enough 
to starve sixty thousand men to death, or idiocy, as a mil- 
itary policy ; base and barbarous enough to carve out of 
the bones of your own sons trinkets to be sported by the 
feminine refinement it deifies ; is base, and barbarous, and 



13 

fiendish enough, not only to assassinate the most estima- 
ble man that ever adorned the magistracy of any people, 
but to seek the couch of a wounded, helpless Minister 
of State, for the sake of despatching him in that con- 
dition. 

When you count up the tears and the graves of the 
last four years, it will appear that the South, in this rebel- 
lion, have accomplished sometliing ; take into account, 
also, what I have already suggested as characteristic of 
their civilization, and after all this, it was not to be doubted 
that they possessed undeveloped capacities. While my 
faith has not wavered for a moment, in the ultimate 
triumph of the nation over treason, the conviction has 
nevertheless haunted me from the first, and deepened 
day by day, that when this vaunting insolence should 
lick the dust for the last time, it would signal its exit by 
something worthy of its nature. It would lay in ashes 
New York perhaps, or Boston, or Philadelphia, or Wash- 
ington; peradventure all. It would sack your towns 
and villages ; it would rob the graves of your noblest 
heroes, or steal your little children from their cradles 
and impale them upon the sharpened limbs of trees, like 
the savages of the olden time. Something of this kind 
I was sure would be done to immortalize the vaunted 
superiority of their peculiar civilization, and make North- 
ern sympathizers know Avhat they had lost by the failure 
of secession. 

But alas ! not even from such dark dyes was the final 
picture to be painted. A depth of coloring must yet be 



14 

brought to the passing panorama, not compassed. In the 
pit of hell, where the anointed villain dipped his pencil 
on that tragic night, and shouted with sulphurous breath, 
'■'■Noiu is tJie South avenged" that color came, and the 
picture was done. Treason had accomplished now, 
something ivorthy of itself. 

If this execrable insurrection needed the polishing 
and the setting of one more jewel in its black diadem of 
infamy, it got it on that Friday night. If no prayer 
had been sufficient to invoke the scorn and contempt of 
posterity upon the ghastly nakedness of Southern barba- 
rism, the prevailing petition went up that night. If the 
high-born chivalry, and boasted heroism, and social pre- 
eminence of a pitiable slaveholding oligarchy, had failed 
to make proof of themselves in the clank of chains ; in 
the auction block ; in the cry of womanhood from out 
of the sacred munitions of nature ; in the burning of black 
men alive for amusement ; in the bowie-knife and blud- 
geon on the floor of Congress ; in damaged Northern 
manhood bought and sold like sheep and asses ; in the 
leprous poison injected up into the very blood of reli- 
gion, whose slimy trail is even now visible upoii our 
Northern altars ; if all these failed, then this last born of 
the patriarchic civilization, the Benjamin of the '•'•divine" 
dynasty, wipes out the failure, and the South stands vin- 
dicated under her own self-pronounced verdict ! That 
dark, damning night, closed the testimony. The foul lie 
of the nineteenth century which puts treason for loyalty ; 
slavery for liberty ; insolence for a gentleman ; and cattle 



15 

for men ; has scored its name, clironicled its achievements, 
recorded its defeat, and cut its epitaph, in four infamous 
words : Coiuard^ Traitor^ Assassin, Fiend. 

But let us thank God, however costly the gain, for 
this dying confession of the monster Slavery. We now 
know how bad it is. There are no diso'uises after this. 
The pit is uncapped. 

4. But be not deceived. This atrocious crime is no 
isolated., l^ersonal act. Be assured that it has wide rela- 
tions, that it is but one sign, cropping out of the dark- 
ness, of a deep, infernal plot, the extent of which no 
man can tell. Waste not the sum of your indignation 
upon the poor contemptible tool who did the diabolical 
deed. He is only more ostentatious, but not more con- 
temptible, than any other tool of the same masters. The 
fact that the life of the Secretary of State was attempted 
simultaneously with that of the President, is a significant 
suggestion of an organized scheme to take the lives of 
many men in high places, and thus paralyze the govern- 
ment. Be not surprised if ere long it should come to 
• light, that the parts had been already assigned, the 
victims designated, the agents secured for this infernal 
work of a general massacre. The plot is Catilinian in its 
proportions. The base men of the Republic are in it, 
the Lucifers, doubtless, of the rebellion. There is con- 
cert in the plan. You know not who share the secrets. 
Whenever you find sympathy, apology, connivance, 
indifference, even, towards this damning deed, open or 



16 

disguised, you have the best of reasons for suspicion. 
It is not certain that your own life and safety are beyond 
the scope of these hidden designs. The master fiend 
may sit at the centre of his " Golden Circle," and tele- 
graph instantly his infernal purposes, to the outermost 
fibre of his web. Any man who is bad enough to take 
secret pleasure in the assassin's work, is not too good to 
be held responsible for it. In open fight, treason has 
failed. What the ^'- gentlemen^'' of the plantations could 
not do by armies, they will now seek to accomplish by 
the arts of villains, cut-throats and outlaws. It is in 
keeping with the firing of Charleston and Richmond 
with their own hands, upon being forced to surrender 
them, thereby causing the inhuman sacrifice of unoffend- 
ing citizens ; it is in keeping with the shipping of infected 
clothing to New York, for the purpose of spreading 
deadly pestilence in the city they had failed to burn. 
This is the second stage of the war, the final campaign 
of the Southern Rebellion. From the flourish of trum- 
pets under which it marched out into the open field, 
putting its own life into the wager, and purposing to 
cover itself with the glories of victory or an honorable 
grave, it has sunk to the secret whisper of the midnight 
assassin, the stealthy tread of the murderer of innocent 
and defenceless individuals. This is the final chapter in 
the history of a rotten dynasty, whose boast has ever 
been that it was too honorable and too high-born to live 
with the men of the North ; the final act of a bloody 
crusade, whose only purpose has ever been to rule or 



17 

ruin. Thank God that you have stripped it of its masks, 
that its hideous loathsomeness has at last been dragged 
out into open day. 

5. Another thing I think we may be ready to accept 
as settled by this bloody tragedy, and that is : there is to 
be no more treason at the Norths sjpohen or acted. This 
fiendish stroke of perfidy and infamy, the cowardly 
assassination of the Chief Magistrate of the Republic, is 
enough to seal the lips of any man, worthy the name of 
American citizen, forever, against any word, or even 
thought of sympathy or apology for the purposes or 
works of traitors henceforth. The man who insults an 
outraged nation hereafter by foul treasonable words is 
not fit to live. The man who at the North, openly 
acknowledges gratification at this deed of devils, is no 
better than the guilty wretches who devised and exe- 
cuted it. He thereby confesses complicity with the act, 
and makes himself an accomplice. Such a man is enti- 
tled to no protection at the hands of the civilized com- 
munity he disgraces. If after this, there be anything 
along your streets in human shape, from whom self- 
respect, long steeped in sympathy with perjury and trea- 
son, has so far perished as to be conscious of secret grat- 
ification at a thing so vile, then let him not complain 
that he is branded with the mark that so justly belongs 
to him, and spurned and shunned as he deserves to be. 
All who prize decency for themselves or their children, 
3 



18. 

or legard such wickedness as unfit for men, will be swift 
to escape its associations. 

Most unquestionably it will come to this. Men will 
be proved. The eyes, even of the blind, will be opened. 
From this hour the nation must be purged. No party 
will dare identify itself with such infamy, hoping to live. 
The foulness of it cannot longer find harbor in the folds 
of any institution. No trade above the pirate's policy, 
will risk the damage of profiting by it ; and no respect- 
able church, standing upon a higher fidelity than neu- 
trality between God and the Devil, will give it asylum, 
or be dumb in its presence. Even burglars and bloody 
eyes of the ring, will feign a virtue fairer than this dark 
boast ; and only what needs but to be known, to be out- 
lawed, and exiled from men, will be left as its pitiable 
memorial. Northern sympathy has had a great deal to 
do in nourishing this viper's fang to fatal audacity. It 
must stop here, or meet the doom it invokes. 

6. And so must ]pity for criminals cease. No more 
wasted tears, cries out this heart-blood of the nation; 
no more misapplied generosity for conquered parricides ; 
an end to false leniency, and a glossing over of treason 
misnamed magnanimity. There is magic force in the 
cry of magnanimity to the fallen. In the exultant ebul- 
lition of our joy, we were becoming willing to connive 
at wickedness in a universal pardon. We were almost 
ready, a week ago, to welcome arch rebels to princely 
ovations. But this had been a more fatal stab at the vitals 



19 

of the nation than that which has struck down our glorious 
President. False compassion for criminals is a premium 
upon crime. When infamous traitors convulse the land 
in civil war, and stab beneficent government for ends 
more odious than treason itself, and then are permitted 
to grace your hospitality instead of the gallows, farewell 
to all order, government and social stability. Mercy was 
never meant to betray justice. Justice betrayed is rot- 
tenness in the bones of our strength. Treason is the 
highest crime named in our civil code. To wink at it is 
to crown it. Demoralization, political debility and death, 
will strike us to the heart, in the very hour of our vic- 
tory, if we are to pave the way with our garments and 
our hosannas, for this heaven-daring crime to return to 
the embrace of our fellowship. We become the traitors, 
— traitors to liberty, to man, and to the eternal sceptre, 
if we do this. 

In this solemn hour, this tearful, heart-broken hour of 
the nation, I seem to see a divine intent to dry up all foun- 
tains of false sympathy, and to bring the land to a proper 
sense of duty, that it may be snatched from a defeat, 
more ignominious in the end, than that by cannon, and 
sword, and fire. Not vengeance do we hear, but a truce 
to all parley with armed treason, with skulking assassins, 
perjured villainy and bankrupt honor, crying out from 
the now still lips and the charity-loving heart of the 
murdered President at Washington. 



20 

7. And not only with armed treason, but treason dis- 
armed, make no treaty. Perjury to-day is perjury 
to-morrow ; treason defeated is treason still. It may be 
held in subjection by tlie strong arm of power, but 
that does not change its nature. Let it be defeated in 
the field, it will exchange the thunderbolt of war for the 
knife of the assassin. Treason and perjury are the wreck 
of all honor, the wreck of all manliness. The high, 
noble elements of humanity are degraded by these crimes ; 
honor perishes, faith perishes, truth perishes. You 
cannot trust such men. When the traitor comes in, the 
man goes out forever. The apostle was no longer, after 
the Judas of the soul took the throne. Benedict Arnold 
was but a suicide's epitaph, wandering through the 
earth, the scorn and contempt of the very nations he had 
sold himself to. The fallen genius that had been seeking 
to murder your government for four years has lost none 
of its fell animus in its immediate overthrow, and will be 
just as ready to spring its mine hereafter, if it can compass 
the opportunity, as it has been heretofore. Its purpose 
is as persistent as it is infamous and deadly. If, after 
to-day, the nation can be deceived by the falseness of 
men whose deeds and purposes have earned them exemp- 
tion from honorable liabilities, then God doubtless will 
give us some more effectual lessons ; for we will yet dare 
to believe that he has designs of salvation for the land. 

Such are some of the more obvious suggestions, arising 
out of this shocking wickedness, upon the first thought. 



21 

So far as tlie vile purposes of treason can accomplish it, 
law, liberty and Christian civilization lie dead in the 
Capitol to-day, stricken down by an assassin more base 
and abhorrent than that which slew Caesar in the 
Senate House of Rome — foully stricken in the person of 
the Chief Magistrate, the honored head of devoted mil- 
lions. Universal Liberty is mourner. A thousand 
broken shackles and countless millions of bruised hopes 
lie bathed in tears to-day. So far as man can accom- 
plish the work of fiends, arrayed in his fallen malice, he 
has done it in this sacrifice. But ah ! the power of 
man is limited ; the bounds of wrath are measured and 
meted out. Treason can kill the body, but cannot kill 
the soul. It can dash to dust the symbol and hide it in 
the grave ; but after that treason has no more power. 
Liberty herself is an imperishable inspiration in the 
world. Truth, like its author, lives forever. Martyrs 
die, but principles are immortal. The Sanhedrims 
and dynasties of hate' and tyranny spot the history of the 
world with their black records. They have crucified and 
buried the prophets that unsealed the purposes of eter- 
nity ; and suborned the powers of darkness to guard the 
sepulchre's mouth. But on some third day God's angel 
unlocked the grave, and the dead came forth re-grasping 
the fallen sceptre, thenceforth to rule forever more. 

In the light of the past I seem already to be reading 
the dark, terrible tragedy that spreads gloom over the 
present. The death of the Son of God regenerated 
the world, and founded the commonwealth of glory. 



22 

From liis tomb sprang forth apostles and saintly men, 
and a power stood upon the earth, that, in this bright 
century, girdles it. The haughty arrogance and blind 
insolence which made treason their ally, and hate and 
lies, for the death of God's truth, sleeps in contempt 
abiding. 

Abraham Lincoln, though dead, yet lives and speaks, — 
lives and shall live so long as goodness has a name, or 
nobleness deserves mention. He shall live in the fame 
of the country he has saved and led up to a grandeur, 
peerless, to-day, among the nations of the earth. He 
shall live in the grateful homage of men wherever lib- 
erty is spoken, or humanity counted sacred, or justice 
commands reverence, or mercy wins a tear. He shall 
live in true nobility of manhood yet to bless the future. 
So long as God's signet and sign-manual shall distinguish 
true excellence from gilded spuriousness, and hollow 
pretence ; while a chain clanks, or tyrant remembers hu- 
miliation, or lives to hate or to blush in retributive shame, 
Abraham Lincoln shall live and be a power in the earth. 

If he had done his work — in the wise counsels of 
heaven that is known — -if the day and the destiny were 
fulfilled, it were well done, — beautifully, grandly done. 
Jt may be that his work was all done. God permits no 
instrument to be laid aside, so long as it is needful in his 
plans. The renowned Patriarch and Leader of old stood 
upon Nebo's height, and there in bright vision saw life 
completed, crowned by memory and hope. The Moses 
of our Exodus saw the nation out of bondage, past the 



23 

river, througli the wilderness, the oppressor dethroned, 
his purposes crushed, the arch defiant traitor himself lick 
the dust, and then, quickly, from the pinnacle of victory, 
God took him to glory. 

It may be that the nation needed a tonic just here. 
Success has its dangers, as well as failures. A deep, 
uncontrollable impulse of joy sometimes debilitates. We 
were possibly in danger of sliding down from that tone 
of judicial vigor essential to carry through to a most 
healthful completion, the interests of law, government 
and civilization we had undertaken to maintain. Mean- 
ness and treachery had dared our patriotism and heroism 
to meet them in the field. They were defeated. It may 
be that we needed still to be stung into a full sense of 
how dark and how damnable this accursed hate of treason 
is ; how utterly false, infernal and persistent in its nature ; 
and that in this one fell stroke of its blind despair, God 
has permitted it to sign its own death-warrant, and 
brought the sense of the nation to an executive efficiency 
that shall stand and do its appointed work. The day of 
reprieves and of commutations is past. The heart of the 
lamented President was devising liberal things, even for 
outlaws. They killed him. They have invoked another 
judge; let them abide their choice. If it be the will of 
Heaven now again, as once it was, that the Canaanite, 
the Hittite, the Amorite and the whole tribe of political 
Ishmaelites be utterly and forever exterminated from the 
land, let that appointed work be done. 

So let there be no misgiving. Stand firm beneath this 



24 

shock as under othei o. God has helped us hitherto. The 
wrath of man ;an praise him; after that it shall be 
stayed. When the stunning of the blow shall have 
passed, and time shall wipe away the blinding tear, we 
shall perceive that this last and most precious blood has 
cemented the nation. Having done all, stand ; and have 
faith' to accept it, that out of the mortal weakness of that 
fearful Friday night, shall be born a strength for us ma- 
jestic as God. Ponder this inscrutable thing, asking 
God what it means. This at least, and first of all it 
means ; turn to high heaven ; put not your trust in princes. 
Cling to the higher arm with more vigor and persist- 
ence than ever. When the mighty fall, it is that He 
may have a place. Nations come to no crowns more than 
souls in light, save through their crosses. Receive the 
mantle .of the God-fearing and the God-strengthened 
ruler, as it falls from his ascending life ; take the color 
of the fallen standard-bearer, and with his own name 
blazing on it, bear it to the heights of victory, unsullied 
as his own pure love of country, mankind, and his God. 
Violent as is the thought upon the bosom of our heart- 
broken sorrow to-day, it is nevertheless true, that there 
is jubilee to-day also. It is where mad spirits strike a 
new key in their hellish wails of discord and blasphemy. 
It is where the damned congregate for despatches from 
their accomplices in this world. Their black flags go up, 
and their fallen breath fumes up with sulphurous delight. 
Or wherever, on earth or in infernal regions, depraved 
spirits hold carnival over deeds of infamy, there at least 



25 

is secret satisfaction, — the leer maLj/n, and putrid gloat 
of heart, if not of lip. In the sultr^ ..air of many an 
injured life, many a damaged soul, where native sweet- 
ness has long since perished, and j&owers of beauty have 
forgotten to bloom, the dews of sympathetic treason 
have deposited themselves, and the stench of this horri- 
ble murder rises as a grateful incense. To the hon T 
human nature be it said, there can be found, even in the 
South, men in whom this taint of moral prostitution 
does not exist. There are some rebel uniforms even, 
that would scorn to embosom it. How infinitely more 
contemptible then, is an un-uniformed man, if he be in 
your own community, sufficiently on the grade of such 
deeds to find pleasure in them. Men sometimes lose the 
grace of hypocrisy. It would seem that considerations 
of decency and prudence might lead them to disguise 
their shame, if not for their own sakes, certainly for their 
children's. And yet there is a terrible chemistry in the 
providence of God, which not only liberates and lets up 
into sunshine and bloom the hidden sweetness of society, 
but no less certainly precipitates to the bottom the dark 
feculent sediment circulating therein. Aside from this 
last element, the assassin's deed will find no affinities. 
So even here the interests of truth are subserved. 

It is a grateful mitigation of this sore affliction, that 
wherever there is anything noble and true, and pure 
to-day; any high sentiment surviving the wrecks of 
honor and faith ; anything strong, elevated, incorruptible 

in man, lofty, pure and beautiful in woman, there are 
4 



26 

tears and woes, and sobbing laments. Our broken joys 
seem mended in part when the good mourn with us. 
Virtue, Religion, Patriotism, Humanity, drop the signs 
of mirth and gladness, and put on the weeds of woe this 
hour. The nation is in tears. The country is heart- 
broken. The homes of the people feel bereavement, per- 
sonal, touching, and they are still. The lowly and the 
down-trodden lay their own heart upon the bier of the 
good man, and millions from the wailing and praying 
nations afar, fling their withered hopes upon the cold 
form of him they had learned to love and had crowned 
with their homage. And history stands ready to sprinkle 
these sorrows at her hallowed fountains, and inurn the 
name of the remarkable man, whose fall is this day the 
nation's lament. 

There is one group, one home, one heart, of woe at 
the Capitol this morning, from which we may not lift the 
curtain, by even the tenderness of our bleeding sympa- 
thies. The God of all mercy still the storm there, and 
hide beneath his own blood-sprinkled compassion^r 
anguish, unspoken and unspeakable, till the night be 
over past ! 

From this bridal of blood, may the land come forth, 
wedded to a future, whose glory shall stand pledged to 
chisel in eternal scorn, the infamy that has caused this 
great sacrifice ; and fling back from its starry crown a 
radiance that shall burn as heaven's diadem, upon the 
brow of him who ushered i?i the auspicious day, at the 
price of his own life. 



27 

In this solemn hour, trembling on the dim line 
between the perils of the past and the perils of the 
future, may the nation take the great hand of God, and 
through a trust deeper than ever, be enabled to say : 
"Thy will be done." The Lord reigneth, let the earth 
rejoice. Standing beside her murdered President, may 
she look up and say: "Help, Lord, when the godly 
cease, when the faithful fail from among the children of 
men. Raise up the strong and the wise that shall take 
the place of fallen leadership, — the true, the mighty and 
the God-fearing, who shall take thy hand, King of 
kings, and go forward in this way without faltering. 
Stand by him iipon whom the cares and burdens of a 
nation noio fall first • and if there be infirmity still lin- 
gering near him^ touched by the potent spell of this hour, 
grant that it flee forever awayy 

It is an hour for vows, an hour for solemn consecration 
to duty; for the joining of hands; for the taking of the 
sacrament of a new gospel of civil liberty. We stand 
not upon thresholds of weakness, friends, but of power. 
This terrible violence, if we read by God's light, opens 
the gates of sublime opportunities. A new era dawns. 
The war is ended doubtless. From this moment Ave have 
new work to ^^erform, and need the stimulus of new and 
peculiar inspirations. I think they come dashing upon 
us in the waves of this terrible outrage. Hereafter lib- 
erty, and Christian civilization in its largest sense, will 
bring into their service new allies. Our countrymen 
know better to-day the difficulties they are to encounter 



28 

in accomplishing the work providence has committed to 
their hands. American civilization must stand upon 
Man, as man, — his rights, privileges and duties, and not 
upon classes and castes. It must work by hope more 
than by memory ; laying its foundations deep in the light 
and truth of eternal principles, rather than in the muta- 
ble quicksands of accident and prerogative. 

Take the cup of chastening then, with the cup of 
blessing. Thank God for what will ever be a nobleness 
and a tenderness in the nation's memory. Ere another 
Sabbath shall come, we shall follow all that is mortal of 
Abraham Lincoln to the tomb. His countrymen, in 
common with great multitudes among the nations 
of the earth, waiting for the fulfillment of the promise, 
toiling for the triumph of great and beneficent principles, 
wherever man has an abode, will go to their work more 
hopefully, and gather fresh inspiration and faith, as they 
shall stand in the days to come, by the grave of the great 
Emancipator. 

Men die, but nations live, and duty is eternal. We 
bid farewell to the earthly life of the man, who had lived 
to earn the heart of an empire. In the wonderful 
methods of God, an imperishable grief must be fertile, 
not sterile. The mellow days will come, following this 
sharp poignancy, in which shall begin to bud and bloom 
forth the deep, hidden meaning of this inscrutable hour. 
Its fruit shall be perennial, gladdening the hearts of 
unborn millions, as the ages roll down their circuits, and 
goodness brings stars to her crown. 



iB S '12 



